I have been looking through lots of commentary on Chomsky this evening, and it is all coming flooding back … I’m not sure if there’s a piece in it, as so much has already been said and there are many other things to write about that have not.
One of the first things that struck me was the realisation that Chomsky is an American, and a left-wing one at that, and so his reality is that much closer to the picture he describes in his books. When he talks of business taking over the media and shutting out debate, one only has to look at the concentration of media interests, political coverage and political behaviour over the last four years to see why he might say what he says.
The continuing conservatism of the US throughout the twentieth century, with intermittent peaks, such as the one we are seeing now, probably helps shed light on his vibrant use of language and metaphor, and maybe why his descriptions of US behaviour are often so violently expressed (for example, the US attacks on Afghanistan would, he claimed, unleash a “silent genocide” on its population).
While I not have gone into detailed research into his economic beliefs (though he has written plenty), it is clear that his general perspective is Marxist, in that there is a degree of economism in his writing, in that most (maybe all) events and political behaviour stems from economic interests.
An area I know his views relatively well are with regard to the start of the cold war, which he claims that the US became involved primarily for its own economic reasons, frequently citing NSC68 and George Kennan.
To make this claim he must argue that US policymakers at the time did not really believe the USSR posed a threat to the US. I believe that he, like others on the Left today, do not fully comprehend the political perspective of the Right, which will often start from the perspective “where are the threats, it is the role of the state to tackle them”; instead, the Left often assumes right-wing fearful Hobbesianism to be a cynical ploy (cf. the war in Iraq). Though I have little sympathy for Hobbesian perspectives, I do believe that the majority of those that hold such views do so for genuine reasons drawn from an alternative political viewpoint.
Not wishing to digress too much, a parallel argument from the opposite perspective is the Right’s frequent claim that left-wing politicians support the welfare state and trade unionism merely out of self-interest, because that is where their support lies, and then wrap such claims in idealist language.
Chomsky’s disregard, often downright contempt, for those that hold alternative views is a constant theme in his writing, and it is this that probably alienates me most from his work. He celebrates his alienation from the mainstream press, and constantly pours scorn on those that work within it, and frequently implicitly and explicitly claims that these people that hold different views from him do so only because of their own self-interest and/or because of indoctrination.
For example, in a recent article on Israel in an Egyptian newspaper, (
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20041118.htm) he opens his piece:
“The fundamental principle is that ‘we are good’ … and what ‘we’ do is dedicated to the highest principles, though there may be errors in practice.”
“The principles are simple, and easy to remember for those seeking a career in respectable circles.”
I would argue that the Italian Marxist Gramschi is more persuasive when he wrote of hegemonies and how they are constructed. A hegemonic order is backed by both coercion and consent. Chomsky’s model, on the other hand, appears based upon coercion and economic self-interest and/or stupidity. The difference is important: Chomsky’s perspective appears to give no room for others to genuinely hold political views at variance to his own.
The NATO bombing of Kosovo, for instance, was – to Chomsky – the next step in US domination of Europe. Political calculations of European leaders responding to emotive television pictures and a political climate supportive of humanitarian intervention, particularly in the UK, are not just dismissed but ignored.
Of course, Chomsky would counter that his model
is based on coercion and consent, but that the consent is manufactured.
He argues: “The elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissidents that results from the operation of these filters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news "objectively" and on the basis of professional news values.” (MC, p1)
However, “the media serve the ends of a dominant elite” and that “in a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda”, which the media serves.
As a result, there is no escape: any political perspective that differs from his own can be dismissed by accusing those that hold such differing views either of ignorance or self interest (interestingly, at least two posters on this board have directly accused me of the latter for criticising Chomsky and Pilger). This position only seems to be a form of ad hominem attack writ large, one that if it is not called as such, is impossible to defend oneself against, but is in fact a logical fallacy.
But, as I said at the top of this, Chomsky does work in the US amongst academics where such processes are more commonplace. US academia is often bought and American political discourses are frequently repressed/dominated by some of the powerful filters he describes in Manufacturing Consent. However, to my mind he extrapolates too far. In a curious parallel with some of his other arguments, he mistakenly universalises the American experience and imposes it on places and people where such models are often rather irrelevant.
His description of the events in Kosovo, for instance, in a book on the subject, does not mention any history of the region and assumes that the attacks of 1999 were primarily about the US and its antipathy towards Milosevic (a factor, but it’s an enormous leap to claim that it was basically the only factor). There is barely a mention of the earlier Bosnian wars, almost no detail of the history of the conflicts, and little mention of Blair’s role in the matter. Instead, the narrative focuses squarely upon the US and its interests. So maybe Chomsky is just another American imperialist …
